I have now read the three books available in English on the influential communist propagandist Willi Müzenberg, who shaped so much discourse in the 20th century, and continues to shape our ideas of protest and political change. I find the whole history of 20th century European Communism both fascinating and discouraging. It seems to me that the problems and failings of his work and the wider problems and failings of international Communism have become our problems, and I would like to avoid repeating the mistakes of 20th century reform and radical movements.
Historiography
The books were Babette Gross’ Münzenberg, a political biography1, Koch’s Double Lives2, and McMeekin’s The Red Millionaire3. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. None, I think, fully captures this important, obscure figure. Gross was Münzenberg’s widow and her book is an account of his political conduct from someone sympathetic to him. She rejected his communism but remained true to his memory. Her book is detailed and is best read in the context of the history of German and Soviet communism; it is full of references to people and places which only make sense in the context of that history. Koch is a novelist and literature professor and his book is an account of Münzenberg’s impact on literature and ideology of the period, with a focus on the character of the people involved and how they were subverted. He was especially interested in the interactions of Hemingway (who was subverted) and Dos Passos (who resisted) in Spain and wrote a whole separate book about them4. Koch, like many authors critical of communism, ends up citing conservative literature. I do wish I had not run across a citation of Paul Johnson’s Modern Times in his book. But he also did extensive primary source research and Gross, by then quite old, granted him a week of interviews.
McMeekin’s book is the published version of his University of California, Berkeley doctoral dissertation: Münzenberg: rise and fall of a Communist tycoon, 1917-19405. McMeekin is conservative; he is published by the Claremont Institute and is author of several histories with a far-right slant. Some of that shows in his book, which seems to me a hate read of Münzenberg’s life. This makes for difficult reading; he is not in sympathy with his subject. That he cites Edward Jay Epstein, a Kennedy assassination truther, does not lead me to trust his work. McMeekin also appears to be something of a goldbug, fascinated with the gold of the tsars. However, he also did extensive primary-source research into both Münzenberg’s life and the finances of his publishing empire, and gives the most complete account of it.
Münzenberg in Historical Context
Having worked my way through the books, what do I think?
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The Soviet Union and the (Third) Comintern was never antifascist and most, maybe all, of its humanitarian aid programs were in fact propaganda programs, which did little to help the people they claimed to help.
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The international communist movement was entirely subverted by the Soviet Union. Its models of protest and revolution were never intended to be successful. The Front Populaire was a sham. To the extent that we continue to use these models of political change, we are adopting ineffective and possibly counterproductive strategies and tactics.
In the following, I discuss three propaganda techniques and campaigns organized by Münzenberg. I hope to write more about how these continue to have influence on our activism: the fake righteous cause, concern trolling, and and the great red hope – messianic communism. I am heavily quoting Koch, himself quoting Babette Gross, who, even in old age, was a remarkable person.6 My conclusions, however, are derived by all three authors.
The Fake Righteous Cause
One of Münzenberg’s favorite propaganda devices was the fake, or at least ineffective, aid organization. The first of these was his Worker’s International Relief (WIR) aka Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe (IAH) or Mezhrabpom. In 1921 a combination of drought, war, revolution, and Soviet policy led to a massive famine in the Soviet Union. The major action undertaken against that famine was US President Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration. Lenin was unhappy with this, and Münzenberg was there to…help? Koch and McMeekin disagree on how much aid the WIR actually provided, with Koch saying a bit, and MeMeekin saying none. But on this all three authors agree:
The leading concern, however, was to generate propaganda. I asked Babette Gross when propaganda, rather than relief, became the dominating purpose of the WIR. “At the first moment,” she replied, with her typical simplicity. – Koch, p. 37
The fake righteous cause was not Münzenberg’s invention, but it was a device he used over and over; there were “peace” organizations which were created to prevent military action against the Soviet Union and “anti-fascist” organizations that did little to act against fascism. As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, there was a major split between the German democratic socialists (SPD) and Communists (KPD), and Münzenberg was there to call the SPD “social fascists.”
Concern Trolling for Moscow
Internationally, Münzenberg’s network operated throughout Europe, and in the the United States. The network reached to Hollywood:
The naive sometimes ask why the apparatus took such elaborate pains to set up the Stalinist networks in Hollywood. If propaganda was the purpose, surely it failed: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was manifestly not producing Soviet propaganda in 1938. This is to miss the point. Of course Willi and Otto [Katz] did not think they could call the shots at Warner Brothers. On the contrary, they would never have permitted their Hollywood people to give away the game by seeking influence in such a stupidly obvious way. Half a century later, sitting with me over tea in Munich, Babette Gross’s voice went tight repeating the litany. You do not endorse Stalin. You do not call yourself a Communist. You do not declare your love for the regime. You do not call on people to support the Soviets. Ever. Under any circumstances.
You claim to be an independent-minded idealist. You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break. You believe in open-mindedness. You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country. You are frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the workingman. You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works. You believe in peace. You yearn for international understanding. You hate fascism. You think the capitalist system is corrupt. You say it over and over and over again. And you say nothing, nothing more. “Ja, Ja, ” she ended wearily. ‘You say all of that.” – Koch, pp. 249-50
Does this not all sound drearily familiar?
The Great Red Hope
Turning back to Europe, this was the period when the Nazis had triumphed in Germany, and Münzenberg and Gross escaped to exile in France. Münzenberg turned Soviet propaganda around. “Social fascism” was over and the Front Populaire was the new thing, and Western intellectuals, horrified by the rise of Naziism and looking for opposition swarmed to joint the various popular fronts. Koch:
It is difficult to exaggerate the impact of the Popular Front on the moral life of the democracies during the mid and late thirties. The Front was rapturously received by many of the most intelligent and committed people in two generations. The seeming path to peace opened an era of good feeling, and the celebration was ebullient and irresistible. In Paris, New York, Hollywood, and London a new variety of Stalinist righteousness became the dominant ethical chic of the era. It left hardly a single cultural figure untouched. The wishfulness of an age had been tapped. – p. 160
But it was all a lie. The Holodomor was a few years before, the Great Terror was beginning, and all Soviet claims to moral superiority fall before before them. Ultimately, Soviet opposition to fascism, perhaps always a facade, ended entirely with the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact and only resumed when Hitler broke that pact.
Conclusions
This study has made clear to me some of the motivations of conservative objections to the left. I did not and do not agree with the conservatives, but it is clear why they regard peace movements with suspicion and socialism with a jaundiced eye. However little we like it on the left, conservative suspicions are sometimes justified, and our ideals have been tainted by the disasters of Russian and Chinese Communism. Nor are we done with their failures. There is far too much of the thinking and models that Münzenberg promulgated still in our ideas of political activism and social change and these models were never successful; often they were covers for propaganda, or defenses of the imperial interests of the Soviet Union. It seems to me important to turn to models that did succeed: the Abolitionist movement in the United States, the Indian Independence movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and so on. All flawed, but huge advances nonetheless.
We must guard against apocalyptic thinking as well as nationalism in our movements. Part of what made international Communism so persuasive was the quasi-religious character of its claims; the image of the on-going apocalypse from which Communism and its leader the Soviet Union could save. But it was all a lie. It is nothing new to say that Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist “communism” was not, in any meaningful sense, communism, but I will repeat that here. It was, instead, fascism – palingenetic (apocalyptic) ultranationalism – cosplaying as communism.
There is, I think, more to be said about Münzenberg’s work itself; I didn’t find much discussion of his work as propaganda or rhetoric, though it might be a more thorough literature search would turn something up, especially if German literature was included. Several more books on his work could be written, I think; Münzenberg was a major figure and is surprisingly poorly documented, at least in English. There is a great deal of vitriolic rhetoric about the man from the right and far right – when Koch published his first edition, he was surprised by the conservative response – but much less thoughtful study, and considering the impact of his work, it ought to be studied purely as propaganda, the way Nazi propaganda has been studied.
I would like to go on to talk about the relationships I see between Soviet-era propaganda and models of political and social change and the models we now desperately need as we face resurgent fascism worldwide. It is a large subject, probably large enough for a book I don’t intend to write, but I hope to have another piece on it soon.
Gross, Babette. Willi Münzenberg: A Political Biography. Translated by Marian Jackson. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1974. ↩︎
Koch, Stephen. Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg, and the Seduction of the Intellectuals. 2nd ed. New York: Enigma Books, 2004. ↩︎
McMeekin, Sean. The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willy Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West. 1st ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ↩︎
Koch, Stephen. The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles. New York: Counterpoint, 2005. ↩︎
McMeekin, Sean Alexander. “Münzenberg: Rise and Fall of a Communist Tycoon, 1917-1940.” Thesis Ph. D. in History–University of California, Berkeley, 2001. ↩︎
I wonder if there are any feminist histories of the international communist movement; there were remarkable women. “I remember a moment early in my research, when the wife of a distinguished American academic emeritus, wrapped in an elegant Spanish shawl, leaned toward me and confided: ‘Young man, you’ve got to talk to us old ladies. We’re the ones who slept with all those spies.’” – Koch, p. 95 ↩︎
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